Install MyUnity On Linux Mint 13 (Maya)

This tutorial shows how you can install MyUnity,
the extended Unity desktop configuration tool, on Linux Mint 13.
MyUnity can usually only be used on Ubuntu operating systems, however
you can get it to run under Mint as well with a little source-file
customization.

This document comes without warranty of any kind! I do not issue any
guarantee that this will work for you!

1 Preliminary Note

MyUnity was originally designed to work only with Ubuntu systems. It
is possible that you run into problems and errors using it on Mint -
none have occured to me until now though.

In this tutorial, I assume you have already installed the Unity
desktop. If not, install it by entering the following into a terminal:

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

During installation, you will be asked which login-manager you would like to use. mdm is the one Mint 12 uses by default, lightdm is the one Ubuntu uses. I find lightdm more appealing and therefore set it as default:

2 Downloading MyUnity Source Files

We need to alter one of MyUnity's source files, so we also need to
compile it ourselves. If you have already installed any version of
MyUnity you need to uninstall it first. Open a terminal (Dash > Installed Applications > Terminal) and enter following:

sudo apt-get remove myunity

Afterwards change to the Downloads directory:

cd ~/Downloads

Log in as root:

su

Then it's time to download MyUnity's sources and install the tools you need for compiling and editing:

3 Compiling

Now that we have everything, we can modify the appropriate source
file so that it recognizes our operating system as Ubuntu 12.04. We can
do this by setting a new value for a single variable. Open Main.module and look for the lineUversion = Right$(Tmp_split[1], 5). Replace it with the following line:

vi Main.module

[...]Uversion = "12.04" ’Uversion = Right$(Tmp_split[1], 5)[...]

Afterwards save and quit. We are now ready to compile. Do so by entering the following:

makemake installexit

Although we are done now, you will probably still get an error when
you try to run MyUnity. For it to go away, you can try to reboot or run
it with different users; it is only temporary and at some time it's supposed to go away.
Remember however that it must be run as the user logged into the
desktop session to work properly. To run MyUnity, just enter the name
into a terminal:

I agree, why? Mint is a distro based on Ubuntu, if you want Unity, just use Ubuntu. Ubuntu has advantages over Debian, but the main advantage Mint has as far as I can see is Mate. This is like a solution to a problem nobody has...

with Ubuntu, you get a pretty good collection of software, and it tends to stay a bit more up to date than Mint. With Mint, you get a more fully tested collection of software, often with fixes to Ubuntu issues (not sure if they feed those fixes back to Ubuntu, and then up to Debian or not; hope they do; that's the purpose of the GPL and software sharing).

So in that light, using Mint provides a bit less volatile environment than Ubuntu, so if you like the Ubuntu look and feel but you like an environment with just a bit of lag - for stability reasons, then I could see potentially using MyUnity with Mint.

Me? Wouldn't bother. I care neither for Mint nor for Unity, Mate, Cinnamon or any of that stuff. Though it's really easy to install and use, I have enough experience to get what I want working just about as fast as having to fool around with either of these distributions to get them to completely behave in the manner that I prefer rather than the manner they were designed for.

So while I have nothing against either of them, neither are they in the mainline of my interests. I do test them occasionally, either to help out or to assess them for those who ask about them. They're both solid systems; it all depends on what you want and prefer to use.

did not work. So I replaced "´" by "'", which seemed to be the right thing, as no more error was displayed during make.

And why would I want to install the whole thing? Because Maya Cinnamon is installed on my box. Recently when I upgraded from my old CRT to a 2560x1440 display, my onboard graphics had no more enough 3D power. That made me aware, that Cinnamon is lacking a fallback mode, that you could stick with. Ubuntu has.

Next thing is, that I have a Nokia N9, which might require some day a replacement for Meego Harmattan. This might be Ubuntu in some mobile version, with Unity of course.

I come to think that Shuttleworth was right with his design decissions, but ahead of the crowd. I'd like to experience Unity myself now on day by day usage. But I do not want to replace Mint allready. I guess, that nat the time of the next system upgrade I have accustomed to Unity and will be back with Ubuntu. I'm a little annoyed, that I probably listened too much to that Unity bashing thats en vouge now.